Sunday January 4, 2015

A lovely rest day exploring Cienfuegos. Yesterday we had explored the downtown boulevard and Jose Marti Square, which Ralf refers to as Joe Marti. Today we walked down Avenida 37 to Punta Gorda. It was a lovely relaxing walk although it did get very hot. At one point I thought I was melting, I was perspiring so much.

The main purpose of the walk was to find the Sculpture Park. The sculptures were made by 17 artists from different generations and different parts of the country, using different materials. It was nice to see that each sculpture had a plaque that had the name of the piece, the artist and the year it was created.

Before the sculpture park we passed the Azul Palacio (Blue Palace), which is now a hotel. The blue palace has seven rooms, I am guessing there is no place to store our bikes, so I don’t think we will stay there.

The Blue Palace is located next to what was the Yacht Club of Cienfuegos. The renamed Club Cienfuegos houses a bar and amusement park.

We noticed a large catamaran with GAdventures on its sail, by the small dock and I asked where it was heading for. It was waiting for its guests to arrive and then was going to sail to Cayo Largo (Cuba), stopping for diving, snorkeling, and fishing along the Cays of the Cayo Largo area. Their guests were primarily from Canada and would be on board for a week. That sounded like a nice weeks vacation, except what happens if you don’t like your fellow guests, you have no way of escaping them.GAdventures is a Canadian company which we used when we cycled Cuba with an organized tour a few years ago.

After the sculpture park we carried on walking down towards the end of the road and the Punta Gorda area. This area is a peninsula which was a very well to do area before the revolution, it became mainly a summer area for many people. Large houses with a view of the sea from both sides of the houses.

We arrived at the Palacio de Valle almost by accident. Eleana our casa host had told us about this place, but with our limited Spanish did not know exactly where it was. It looks like a Moorish/Moroccan influenced house. It was finished in 1917 at a cost of one and a half million pesos. You pay 2 CUC per person to enter the building and a drink on the terrassa is included in the entrance fee.

Our final walk was to the very end of the Punta Gorda peninsula. It must have been a very grand area in its day. Most of the houses are now casa particulars. This one house is empty, I wondered what the price of it would be and how you could renovate it to its original glory.

We treated ourselves to a bicycle taxi back to Joe Marti Square. I felt a little guilty at making the poor guy pedal for us, but we were hot and tired.

We had lunch at the same restaurant as yesterday and chatted to an American who had a yacht in the harbor. Rich had stopped working about nine years ago and had been sailing the Caribbean since then. His plan was to head across the Atlantic next year to the Mediterranean. We talked about Schengen and he will encounter the same problem as Ralf did. We told him that Turkey, Cyprus and the UK is not part of Schengen. This might help him a little with his planning. Rich was a really nice guy and very interesting to talk to. We chatted about Cuba and the changes that we have noticed, but also what might happen with improved relations with the US. We agreed that there were going to be many changes some good and some bad over the next few years. We also chatted about the differences between our trip and his trip. A lot more things to go wrong on a boat than on a bicycle.

After lunch I updated the blog and Ralf went on the hunt for water. Most of the stores were closed, but my hunter/gather managed to get a 5litre bottle before the store closed.